The baby group: charting the typologies of a parental community of practice.

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an initial exploration of the ‘baby group’. These informal associations of parents (typically mothers) and their children function as important sites of support and friendship. As peer-constituted and mediated ‘communities of practice’, ‘baby’ or ‘mother’s groups’ present as significant forums for negotiating prevailing knowledge-structures that circulate around parenting. In making a case for the baby-group as a social learning system and expression of a core discussion group, this paper will chart a typology of the baby group via an analysis of, firstly, the scholarly and grey-literature attached to baby groups and secondly, an initial incursion into focus group and interview-derived data collected during discussions with one such group located in south-east Queensland, Australia. These two sources provide the foundation from which this paper will offer initial insights into the role and purpose of the baby group, and from which an agenda for the further exploration of the baby group might commence.